An article by Kimmo Eriksson, entitled The Nonsense Math Effect, has recently been published. In short the paper gives support to the idea that the introduction of mathematical formulae into social science papers increases the estimation of the result. This is clearly worrying.
Here is the abstract:
Mathematics is a fundamental tool of research. Although potentially applicable in every discipline, the amount of training in mathematics that students typically receive varies greatly between different disciplines. In those disciplines where most researchers do not master mathematics, the use of mathematics may be held in too much awe. To demonstrate this I conducted an online experiment with 200 participants, all of which had experience of reading research reports and a postgraduate degree (in any subject). Participants were presented with the abstracts from two published papers (one in evolutionary anthropology and one in sociology). Based on these abstracts, participants were asked to judge the quality of the research. Either one or the other of the two abstracts was manipulated through the inclusion of an extra sentence taken from a completely unrelated paper and presenting an equation that made no sense in the context. The abstract that included the meaningless mathematics tended to be judged of higher quality. However, this "nonsense math effect" was not found among participants with degrees in mathematics, science, technology or medicine.
For a discussion of this paper, follow this link.
Same thing happens in philosophy all the time. I recently reread Fodors attack on deotic reasoning. Its largely full of P->Q gibberish which he hopes people wont call him one because most folk dont understand it. Its essentially a subset of the argument from authority plus a kind of poisoning the well--"only an idiot who doesnt get maths would disagree with X"
ReplyDeleteSokal hoax anyone?